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The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran brings the region closer to the conflagration that many have feared for monthsDim hopes that a ceasefire in Gaza might be in view have been extinguished, for now at least, with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Israel has not claimed responsibility for killing the political leader of Hamas, but Iran's supreme leader, AyatollahAli Khamenei, was swift to vow vengeance.It came hours after Israel said it had killed FuadShukr, Hezbollah's top military commander, in an airstrike in southern Beirut, blaming him for the attack that killed 12 children in the occupied Golan Heights last week. The militant group did not immediately confirm his death; ambiguity leaves it room for manoeuvre too. Add in recent strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, one day after Israel pledged revenge for a Houthi drone attack, and a pattern is clear.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

User drop suggests rejection of harsh rhetoric' spewed by the former US president, rightwing media analyst saysDonald Trump's Truth Social platform experienced a third straight month of audience decline in June, a leading analyst of rightwing media said, detecting signs of trouble at the ballot box" for the Republican presidential nominee.The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform," Howard Polskin said. Continue reading...

For such activists, the FCC's new regulations represent a good start - and just thatYou'd be forgiven for falling behind on your federal regulatory news this past month. But amid the chaos of an assassination attempt on the Republican nominee, the self-removal of the Democratic nominee, the meme-ification of the current Vice President, and a flat Diet Mountain Dew joke from her would-be successor, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a historic measure that will change the lives of millions of incarcerated people and their loved ones.For decades, activists and lawmakers have fought to reduce the cost of calls from prison. As I wrote about in 2021, many prisoners and their loved ones have paid as much as a dollar or more per minute to stay in touch. This exorbitant cost has disproportionately driven women and people of color into debt, while the correctional telecom industry-about 80% of which is controlled by just two companies-extracted over $1.4 billion a year.Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times Continue reading...

The American has dominated her sport for years. But, three years after a painful debut in Tokyo, she finished outside the medals once againThree years ago Hannah Roberts, already the best freestyle BMX rider of her generation before her 20th birthday, entered the women's park competition at the Tokyo Olympics as the overwhelming favorite, having swept the entire World Cup schedule in addition to the past two world championships. After qualifying first for the final, her opening-run score at the Ariake Urban Sports Park was nearly seven points better than anyone in the field. But when Britain's Charlotte Worthington laid down the ride of her life to move into gold medal position, Roberts went home with silver after landing hard on an early jump and abandoning the rest of her final run. She'd later admit she competed the entire time with a taped-up broken foot.Now 22 and still the dominant force in her sport, and with three more world titles under her belt, Roberts has spoken at length about how that disappointment has motivated her, pushing her forth through countless six-hour training days on the bike or in the gym when she's not courting sponsors to pay the bills. All signs pointed to a redemptive gold at these Paris Olympics even before the competition was blown open during Tuesday's preliminary round, which saw Roberts top all qualifiers once again while defending champion Worthington and Tokyo bronze medalist Nikita Ducarroz failed to reach the final. Continue reading...

Company deeply regrets' the news, taking 7m pounds of deli and poultry items, including bacon and ham, off shelvesBoar's Head products have been recalled due a deadly listeria outbreak, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Tuesday.An additional 7m pounds of deli and poultry items are being recalled due to the deadly outbreak after Strassburger brand Liverwurst products were recalled last week. These products have sell by" dates ranging from 29 July through 17 October, the USDA said. Continue reading...

Secretary of state says suspension is due to anti-democratic' actions from the Georgian governmentThe US has suspended $95m in assistance to Georgia after its parliament adopted legislation related to foreign agents that critics say was inspired by a Russian law used to crack down on political dissent and that sparked weeks of mass protests.

Visiting the races this week, it felt as if there was no better place to be in all the world. No wonder the locals were so proudWhen it comes to friendliness and fun, I hold the Irish to higher standards than people of other countries. So when the chap at the car rental desk at Shannon airport was merely civil, I was disappointed - not only in him, but perhaps in his country, too. I felt let down. I mean, this was harsh, as he wasn't remotely unfriendly, but I had expected more. On some level, I wanted to peer over the counter and see a furious stepdance in full flow below, even as his static top half tried to sell me extra insurance cover. But nothing. Where was this man's craic?I don't think you should use that word if you are not from Ireland, but I ask again: where was his craic? He was Irish, therefore I needed more from him than simple efficiency. I appreciate this nonsense arises from me subscribing to a national stereotype as cheap as any other, but I would plead that there are worse prejudices to harbour. Continue reading...

Ashley Benefield had been charged with second-degree murder with a firearm, but was convicted of manslaughterA jury in Florida convicted Ashley Benefield of manslaughter on Tuesday night over the fatal shooting of her husband in 2020 after more than six hours of deliberations.The 33-year-old former ballerina was accused of shooting and killing her estranged husband, Douglas Benefield, who was 59 at the time of his death. She had been charged with second-degree murder with a firearm, but was convicted on Tuesday of manslaughter, a lesser crime. Continue reading...

Once dwindling Biden polls now appear more promising for Harris, as residents are excited' and energized'By most measures, Democrats' chances to take Michigan, a must-win, upper midwest swing state, were rapidly dwindling two weeks ago. Polling released that day showed Joe Biden down seven points, and perhaps insurmountably ceding ground to Donald Trump among key blocs.Then everything changed. Continue reading...

Researchers found levels of lead and cadmium that far exceed allowable amounts under California guidelinesA new study has found numerous dark chocolate products are contaminated with lead and cadmium, two highly toxic metals.The study by researchers at George Washington University was published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Nutrition. Continue reading...

President on Monday called court's immunity ruling dangerous' and proposed constitutional amendmentDonald Trump has landed a handful of legal victories in recent weeks, but Joe Biden this week set his sights on disrupting the ex-president's efforts to evade prosecution - calling for reform that would make him legally accountable. Continue reading...

Semaglutides are powerful drugs that carry risks, not tools for rapid weight lossSince anti-obesity drugs such as semaglutide (branded as Ozempic or Wegovy) have been approved, they have gone from being niche medicines prescribed by doctors to treat people with type 2 diabetes, to being used widely as weight-loss tools. In the United States, a survey of adults found that 12% had taken Ozempic or a similar type of medicine - they are known as GLP-1 agonists - and 6% (about 15 million people) were on it regularly. This was in spite of the monthly cost of the medicine, which is almost $1,000 for those without insurance.In the UK, Ozempic-like drugs have been prescribed on the NHS (free of cost) to people with type 2 diabetes, or when the drug has been deemed medically necessary. Yet just like in the US, the sales of British online retailers including pharmacies and beauty companies have boomed, as they have offered the weekly injection solution to those wanting to shed excess weight, at prices as low as about 72 ($92) a month. The consequence is that too many people (including those whose weight doesn't present any health risks) are taking the drug who don't need it. In many cases they don't understand how it works in the body, or its side effects. An A&E doctor recently warned that young women are presenting with potentially deadly complications from using the drug to achieve weight loss.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading...

Stephen Richer, Maricopa county's top election official, defended results showing Trump lost in 2020The top election official in Arizona's Maricopa county, who became nationally known for defending the 2020 election results from false claims by Donald Trump and others of fraud, has lost his seat in the Republican primary to a challenger who questioned those 2020 results.In his campaign, Stephen Richer reaffirmed in a primary debate with his Republican opponents that neither the 2020 nor 2022 elections were stolen. His opponents continued questioned the results, with one partly blaming Mark Zuckerberg, claiming the Facebook founder dropped in illegal drop boxes" to sway the elections. Continue reading...

The killing of Hamas's political leader has raised tensions yet again. Only a ceasefire in Gaza offers any prospect of peaceFailure to halt the war in Gaza lies at the heart of the latest lethal savagery in the Middle East. The assassination in Tehran of Hamas's political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, will be celebrated in Israel as just revenge for the 7 October atrocities. But Islamist hardliners in Iran and militant groups across the Arab world will see it as further proof of their belief that the state of Israel is a menace that must be destroyed at all costs.And so the hatred, the violence and the misery will continue unchecked, and will in all probability worsen and spread. Just because this homicidal cycle is familiar does not mean it cannot accelerate. Few parts of the Middle East - Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan - have escaped the toxic fallout of the Gaza conflict. In Washington and Britain, domestic politics are roiled by the fury and the grief. The UN's impotence is daily, humiliatingly exposed. No one is immune to this poison. Continue reading...

Victor Moses says officers ignored warning signs during police academy's violent fight day' trainingA police recruit who had to have both of his legs amputated after losing consciousness and repeatedly collapsing during fight training at Denver's police academy is suing those who allegedly forced him to continue the barbaric hazing ritual" after paramedics ignored warning signs.Victor Moses, 29, alleges in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday that aggressive officers knocked him down multiple times in the second round of fight day" last year, with one of them shoving him off the mat and causing him to hit his head on the floor. He said he was pressured to continue, with officers picking him up and setting him back on his feet, before paramedics standing by were asked to check him out, the lawsuit said. Continue reading...

Fears of fresh sell-off after Nvidia and Microsoft shares dip, but other chip stocks continue to riseInvestors are sending mixed signals regarding their appetite for tech stocks, as the growing debate over the artificial intelligence boom, and a US clampdown on chip exports to China, raise questions over the direction of growth for key companies.There were fears of a fresh sell-off after the US-listed shares in the chip maker Nvidia dropped 7% overnight, amid concerns that excitement over companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence development had been overblown. Continue reading...

Barry county sheriff known for election denialism has fought government overreach' for 20 years. Now he faces a new threat - local oppositionThis article was produced as a collaboration between Bolts and the Guardian.On a sunny afternoon in July, a crowd of roughly 100 gathered to listen to their local sheriff campaign for re-election in south-western Michigan. A self-described constitutional sheriff" with longstanding ties to militia groups, Dar Leaf has made a national name for himself in far-right circles with his fruitless investigation to uncover evidence for Donald Trump's lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Continue reading...

Kamala Harris has challenged the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and his running mate, JD Vance, to meet her in a debate and address their criticisms directly. Harris, addressing a crowd of 10,000 during a campaign event at the Georgia State Convocation Center in Atlanta, said: 'I do hope Trump will agree to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes - if you got something to say, say it to my face'

With Trump in Exile, Meridith McGraw offers wide-ranging portrait of former president's moves since January 2021Kari Lake secured the Republican nomination for US Senate in Arizona on Tuesday, her convincing primary win fueled by Donald Trump's endorsement. But according to a new book, Trump has regularly mocked Lake over how fervently she advances his election fraud lie.Lake's commitment to talking about fraud in the 2020 election would make even Trump laugh at times," Meridith McGraw of Politico writes in Trump in Exile, an account of the former president turned presidential nominee's years since leaving power. The book is due out in the US next week; the Guardian obtained a copy. Continue reading...

The justices see themselves as philosopher-kings. But the public, increasingly, sees them as corrupt and unaccountableIn some ways, there's something enviable about Joe Biden's position. As a lame duck, he now retains all the official powers of the presidency, but with much less scrutiny and accountability. He can ascend to no higher office than the one he has, and since he's taken himself out of the race, he can no longer lose a job he has essentially already quit. He may have dwindling influence over a party that has already coalesced around the vice-president, Kamala Harris, as its new leader, but he retains the president's bully pulpit in the absence of political consequence. What remains is a period in which Joe Biden can do more or less whatever he wants. And on Monday, he decided to embrace supreme court reform.In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, and then in a speech he delivered in Austin, Texas, the president cited dangerous and extreme decisions" by the court, along with a series of ethics scandals surrounding conservative justices, as justification for three major proposals. First, Biden called for a constitutional amendment that would clarify that presidents can be prosecuted for crimes they commit while in office, is a direct response to the court's ruling that granted broad criminal immunity to Donald Trump in July's Trump v United States.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Assassination fuels fears of widening regional war. Plus, Simone Biles leads USA to gold

BBC's Gary O'Donoghue hopes his reporting shows barriers put in the way of disabled people do not need to be there'As Gary O'Donoghue interviewed the Donald Trump supporter who watched a man calmly climb onto the roof of a nearby building and fire a rifle at the former US president, the BBC television reporter could not see his subject.O'Donoghue, who is blind, could only hear him. And he came to regard that as an advantage upon later being informed that witness Greg Smith cut a bizarre figure to some - clutching a can of beer in his right hand while wearing a red, pro-Trump visor with wild fake hair styled to resemble the Republican presidential nominee's signature coiffure. Continue reading...

A new book looks at how swimmers from Chicago, Hawaii and Japan helped usher in a new Olympic era a century ago in ParisCompetition took center stage in the men's 100m freestyle final at the 1924 Summer Olympics - then, as now, hosted by Paris. A century ago, swimming epitomized the Roaring Twenties. It was an era of fast music, fast vehicles - and fast swimmers. Yet if the battle for bragging rights in the pool was stiffer than ever, it was also occurring under more equal conditions: In a first, elite swimmers of different races got star billing at an Olympic final - a challenge to the era's popular pseudoscience of eugenics and widespread anti-immigration sentiment in the US. A new book, Three Kings: Race, Class, and the Barrier-Breaking Rivals Who Launched the Modern Olympic Age by Todd Balf, revisits the 1924 100m freestyle final as we approach the 2024 edition this week .I think that the interest, in part, was just these three swimmers of different skin colors who really wanted to be the fastest there ever was in the signature event, the 100m," Balf says of his motivation for writing the book. I was looking into these fellows. They were described in the press in almost like superhero terms - mermen, they were flying fish, torpedoes." Continue reading...

Experienced sports official Tamara Sheppard has high hopes for rugby in United States after women's sevens team snatched bronze at Paris 2024Dozens and dozens of American accents filled the night outside Stade De France on Tuesday, sharing the historic moment: a first Olympic medal for the USA in rugby sevens. They mulled about the players; a smiling crowd of friends, family, staff and fans, desperate for a hug and a photo from these new American heroes.But one voice was not like the others. Tamara Sheppard, the former head of high performance for the Australian swimming team, was in the thick of it. The Queenslander took the job overseeing USA Rugby's men's and women's program seven months ago. And although Tuesday was an important milestone in rugby's North American emergence, to Sheppard the work is only just beginning. Continue reading...

It would raise $250bn to help offset some of the damage the super-rich cause. Yet they'll do everything to stop it in its tracksWho is government for? It's a question we should never stop asking. The answer that keeps coming back is not the majority". For example, the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic produced remarkably consistent polling results. Repeated surveys showed fewer than 10% of people wished to return to the pre-pandemic economy. The great majority wanted to see one good thing emerging from the trauma of the illness and the measures used to address it: a fairer, greener, kinder economic system.But the Conservative government had other ideas. It announced what then prime minister Boris Johnson called a significant return to normality". His normality, of course. The structure of the Covid bailouts ensured that the big banks gained massively, often at the expense of small businesses. Executive pay and dividends for shareholders soared, while lowlier workers lost incomes and livelihoods.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Far-right firebrand to face off against Democrat Ruben Gallego for US Senate seat vacated by Kyrsten SinemaKari Lake, the far-right firebrand and favorite of Donald Trump, has won Arizona's Republican Senate primary.The Associated Press projected the race at 8.44pm Arizona time on Tuesday night. Lake rose to prominence as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, when she refused to concede the race to her Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs. Continue reading...

Park fire scorches 386,000 acres as firefighters battle blazes across US west, including historic mining town of HavilahThe largest wildfire in the US swelled to more than 380,000 acres (154,000 hectares) on Tuesday morning, an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles and three times the surface area of Lake Tahoe, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a remote wilderness area in northern California.Meanwhile, the destruction caused by wildfires raging across the US west came into sharp focus as photographers documented the destruction left by the Borel fire in southern California. The fast-growing fire tore through the historic mining town of Havilah, leaving burnt buildings, cars and forests. Continue reading...

Appearing on Fox News, Trump repeated his weekend remarks to Christian summit attendees that they would never need to vote again if he returns to the presidency in November. But, after being asked repeatedly on Fox News to clarify what he meant, the Republican former president denied threatening to permanently stay in office beyond his second - and constitutionally mandated final - four-year term

Zoom call - with pets included - organized as riposte to comments made by JD Vance about childless cat ladies'A group of pet lovers and self-described cat ladies" came together for the latest in a series of Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. The Tuesday evening call was hosted by Christine Pelosi, a political consultant and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party.The call was not organized around racial and ethnic identity, but as a rebuff to comments made in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump's running mate, who told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too". Continue reading...

VP touts prosecution record to cheering crowd after state leaders including Stacey Abrams take stage to show supportThree weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.It's probably too early - nine days since the president's withdrawal and the vice-president's ascension - to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee. Continue reading...

Republican vice-presidential nominee praises Kevin Roberts' conservative vision, stymying Trump's efforts to deny tiesJD Vance endorses the ideas of Kevin Roberts, leader of Project 2025, as a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics" and a surprising - even jarring" path forward for conservatives, the Republican vice-presidential nominee writes in the foreword of Roberts' upcoming book.The foreword was obtained and published in full by the New Republic on Tuesday. Roberts' book is out in September. Its title was watered down recently to remove references to burning down" Washington. Continue reading...

This blog is closed. You can find our latest US elections coverage here.Kamala Harris's campaign has announced a $50m advertising blitz ahead of the Democratic national convention next month with a television ad that portrays the presumptive Democratic nominee as fearless".The 60-second ad will be the first in a series of paid media efforts ahead of the convention, which begins 19 August in Chicago.We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back. Continue reading...

American dream played out in piece of irresistible theatre to bury the memories of the Damned Games of TokyoOf course there was theatre at the very end. Two hours into this women's Artistic Gymnastics Team final, with the USA coasting grandly at the head of the field, the logistics of competition left Simone Biles with one final act to stop the show.Three years on from Tokyo and The Breakdown, the only discipline remaining in that same team event was the Biles floor routine. And so in front of Bill Gates, Gianni Infantino, Serena Williams and Spike Lee, in front of the eyes of the world as ever, Simone Biles got to dance like no one was watching. Continue reading...

Britain retained men's 4x200 freestyle gold in the Paris pool, Andy Murray and Dan Evans survived again and Simone Biles lit up the GamesFollowing in the footsteps of their male counterparts, the US women's basketball team began their Olympic campaign looking like a team with a point to prove. The Americans now have a 56-game Olympic winning streak that dates to the 1992 Barcelona Games. It means 42-year-old Diana Taurasi is on track for a sixth consecutive gold medal.Watching Tom Pidcock deal with a flat tyre and win the cross-country cycling was much easier to enjoy.It was a ride of pure, thrilling instinct: a welcome reminder that in the chaos of competitive cross-country biking, sometimes the best plan is no plan at all. And Pidcock, who has won on the snow-flecked peaks of Alpe d'Huez and the dandruff-white roads of Strade Bianche and now the verdant woodland of Paris, is in many ways a cyclist of the romantic imagination, of a time before strategies and specialisation and fouryear plans, when the essence of the sport was simply to get on your bike and thrash the hell out of it.Specialisation will surely come for Pidcock too in the end. With a second gold safely in the bag, and with his peak years approaching, all the incentives seem to point towards a proper tilt at the Tour with Ineos Grenadiers, the laborious process of chiselling and sanding himself down into a pure mountain machine. But here, amid the tree stumps and the dirt, is where his bold and breathtaking range of skills finds its most vivid and spectacular expression. Continue reading...

Paul Dans will be departing the team' over potential government staffing if Trump wins in November

Many criticize ex-president's appearance at Black journalists' conference as irresponsibleOn Monday night, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that Donald Trump will participate in a panel discussion at the organization's annual convention in Chicago, which starts on Wednesday.The announcement, which said that the Q&A would concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community", was met with swift online backlash from some Black journalists. They decried the decision to invite a presidential candidate who has lambasted Black journalists, led a movement to squash diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and who is responsible for increased anti-journalistic sentiment, including the popularization of the term fake news" to describe factual, but potentially unflattering, reporting. Continue reading...

Americans are desperate for the top court to be reformed. Kamala Harris could deliver change if she winsWe already knew the monumental stakes in this election: prosecutor v felon, the rule of law v the rule of raw power; democracy v dictatorship; women's right to decide who they want to be and whether or not they wish to bear children v the Handmaid's Tale.Now add US supreme court reform v retrenchment. On Monday, Joe Biden proposed concrete steps to correct the supreme court extremism that Donald Trump has enabled through three appointments to the court. And the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris quickly endorsed it. Continue reading...

The profile made more than 700 extreme' anti-immigrant and antisemitic comments from 2019 to 2020Though they have not pinpointed a motive behind Donald Trump's failed assassination attempt, investigators are examining a social media account with antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts that they suspect might be connected to the former US president's would-be killer, according to the FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate.Abbate on Tuesday appeared alongside the acting US Secret Service director, Ronald Rowe Jr, before a US Senate panel and said: In about the 2019, 2020 timeframe, there were over 700 comments posted from this account. Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature." Continue reading...

Harris's Fearless ad offers hope for future, while Trump's I Don't Understand attacks crime and immigration policiesKamala Harris and Donald Trump released dueling campaign ads on Tuesday, as the reshaped US presidential election began to grind into gear with 98 days to go.The US vice-president's ad, Fearless, was her first since she became the de facto Democratic nominee, after Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign and endorsed her. Continue reading...